Tuesday, 8 December 2015

Me saying Mass for the Scouts. Nothing to do with the Mass this evening, but a Hell of a shot.

The Mass was a triumph! We had a dozen people there, and to be honest it had not been advertised.

I know that Fr Brown (here) said Mass in the upper chapel, but the Norman chapel is still up for grabs... so was this the first Tridentine Mass there? Only you know dear readers. Ask you friends and foes, ask the spies. (The spies know everything...)

I wonder if the Mass I celebrate tonight at 6pm in honour of the Immaculate Concpetion of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Normal Chapel of University College Durham (Castle) is the first of its type since the (soi-disant) Reformation?

I know that there have been other Catholic Masses said here, but I suspect only since Our Lady forcibly closed the II Vatican Council today, 50 years ago.

I cannot imaging that either side would have welcomed some Catholic Priest wandering along and offering Mass pre-last Council. And since then, while I know that OF Mass has been offered, I wonder if the Old Rite has been said her, or if this is the first.

Thursday, 3 December 2015

The jury and I are pleased to announce that this year's Advent Calendar award goes to this one, from the film Frozen. I think it is a film. I know it has a song attached to it because I heard it everywhere I went for what seems like forever.

Who could forget such Advent Calendars of yesteryear? The wonderful 2014 "Starwars" edition - Hmmm... the chocolates are tasty in this one.
And also Starwars in 2012 - I must like Starwars... You are an Evangelist, Luke.

Having been kicked off by Smarties in 2011 - Apparently only they have the answer.

So I bid you "Happy Advent!"

-------

A critical response

Tradition is silent as to what happened to the 2013 Calendar. We can only suppose that later redactors removed reference to it for some reason. This would seem logical as there is an obvious continuation of Calendar references which were important to the author. That the 2014 calendar post is silent about any reference to the preceding year and there is no mention of the intervening gap, seems at odds with the authors plain statements in the work, where other such lacunae are observed. Further this seems illogical as the practice of mentioning the calendars was a reasonably recent innovation, the author could easily have remarked on the gap and no offence would have been caused. With such a recent innovation, the readers of the blog would not necessarily have expected or been affected by a year in which the Calendar was either not bought, or not mentioned. Nor should we suppose that the missing calendar reference is as a result of 'self-editing' as the subject of the posts is lighthearted: they neither attack nor reprimand. When other posts are viewed alongside the calendar posts, we could easily see better candidates for removal.

It would seem then that the most likely possibility is that a later redactor of the blog removed the 2013 post about Advent Calendars for an unspecified reason. We can make a hypothesis that that year the author bought a religious Advent Calendar which was at odds with the other Calendrical posts. Rather than creating a post to replace the religious 2013 original, a difficult proposition concerning the particular style and syntax of the author, the redactor simply removed the offending post to keep the overarching mood and type of the original posts.

This may also be the reason for the absence of posting in December 2013 as a whole. In order to disguise the Advent Calendar post removal, the redactor removed the whole of the section.

The traces of this action can only be seen when identifying the authors commitment to recording the Advent Calendar purchases from year to year, be they sacred or secular (for surely in this case the presence of the Calendar takes priority over its form or type) and remarking on the striking omission of 2013.

We can only say that this 2013 post must have infuriated the redactor to such an extent that he was willing to mutilate the very texts of that year's blog.

If this was because of the blog's fundamental religious nature, then we must conjecture that this redactor was radically critical of the religion as espoused by the blog: honouring tradition, a deep and profound love of scripture; a sense of humour in the essential human condition viz a viz the figure of God and/or organised religion.

Wednesday, 25 November 2015

The call from the Bishops of England and Wales that
the Good Friday prayer concerning the Jews is quite extraordinary.

It concerns a prayer said in not more than half a
dozen churches once a year, and was composed by a still-living Pope.

But even that is not the worst thing. The really worrying
thing is the bad theology which underlies the request. The explanatory statement
(here) runs as follows: The 1970s prayer reflected the new thinking on the
position of Judaism with regards to Catholicism found within Nostra Ætate. This
was because Nostra Ætate “acknowledged the unique spiritual bond between
Christians and Jews since it was the Jews who first heard the Word of God.”
Even St John Paul II had said in 1980 that the covenant had never been revoked.
Since the church is giving inconsistent messages the Jewish community is upset,
so the new prayer of Pope Benedict XVI should be changed.

Let us leave for a moment that this quote of St John
Paul II was made during a speech, and so when he said that the covenant had
never been revoked, it has little, unspecified, doctrinal weight. Let us also leave for a
moment that if a newer prayer has been issued to replace an older one, then it would
seem logical that the newer (Benedict XVI’s) should have priority. If there are
mixed messages being given (one of the problems cited by the Bishops), then
they should be modified in line with the newer not the older prayer – 1970 out,
2008 in.

But ignoring all this, the truly worrying thing is
that this comes from a misreading of Nostra Ætate and the Vatican II documents
as a whole. Yes the documents continually stress the close bonds between the Jews
and the Church. Yes they are the community who first heard the word of God. But
in no place does the Council state or even imply that the message of the Kingdom
should not be preached to all people, including the Jews. The forgotten
document Ad Gentes is clear on this point.

And what exactly is this covenant that is being
appealed to? Which one? Is it one of the Ancient ones of the Old Testament:
Sinai, David, Abraham, Adam, Noah, Phineas, the New Covenant? The Old Testament
does not speak of ‘the’ covenant, so why is Judaism now to be defined as ‘the
people of the covenant’? They aren’t in their own scriptures, they aren’t in the
New Testament, they aren’t in the early church, they aren’t in the Vatican II documents.

In trying to avoid charges of supersessionism, the
Bishops are proposing an imperialist Christian definition of Judaism which
straitjackets it into Christian terms. Oh, and subsumes all of the ‘Jews’ into
one undifferentiated lot.

So what are the theological implications of the Bishops’
calls? A dual covenant theology, where one is ‘never revoked’ and the other, in
Christ, is the one that we Christians go by? We would have to repudiate Dominus
Iesus (2000), ignore Ad Gentes, rewrite the rest of Vatican II, reformulate our
Christology and theology of redemption. This is just the beginning. Why should we
ignore the covenant with all creation in Noah? How dare we bring the message of
Christ to anyone… did not God make them all? Should they not all grow in their
revelations of the divine?

Are we really to believe that the Bishops suddenly
woke up one morning, seven years after its promulgation and though “wait a
minute… there might be a problem with this prayer”. And if not, why have they
ignored the deeply seated concerns about the hurt ‘Judaism’ felt for those same seven
years?

Or is this internal church politics, where
suddenly the Bishops feel brave enough to ask Rome to roll back the theology of
Benedict XVI and the use of the Latin Mass? Like some child sneaking into the classroom
at the end of the day and scribbling on someone else’s work when the teacher
has gone home.

Perhaps this really is out of concern for
Jewish/Catholic relations, but the implications are massive. It is based on bad theological foundations and will ultimately lead to more hurt and offense. Bad theology
will never lead to good praxis. Bad theology leads to bad situations.

-----

As an aside I wonder which theologians the Bishops
consulted. There are few of us in this field. Admittedly I am just a second
year PhD student working on ‘Covenantal Theology in Catholic/Jewish relations
after Nostra Ætate’ supported by my Catholic Diocese, but hey, what would I
know.

Thursday, 5 November 2015

Today our country celebrates the burning of a Catholic. The historical situation was one of treason, but its continued celebration was one of anti-Catholicism.

I am fond of Guy Fawkes, my first dry Mass as a seminarian was a requiem for the repose of his soul. And I remember a poem I wrote in my primary school about him:

Under the clock of Big BenLay Guy Fawkes and his menWith one and a half tonnes of dynamiteGuy Fawkes waited until night.

But the cellar was searched the night beforeGuy Fawkes' companions watched with aweGuy Fawkes was placed upon the rack,They made a plan to rebel back.

Not high art, I know, but I was only nine - give me a break. Funnily though, I have remembered it for 36 years.

So today Lewis will burn an effigy of the Pope (here) to continue the anti-Catholic atmosphere. Actually I hope they do burn an effigy of him. If not, then the Pope is reconciled to the world, accepted by it, and we are no longer counter-cultural and no longer represent Christ.

Tuesday, 3 November 2015

What was the Synod on the family doing? I think it might have been one of two things. First it might have been an exercise in bringing to a public forum the thoughts of the Church was a
whole: laity, religious, clergy and the Holy Father. I suppose this is why
there was a consultation from each Bishop to His diocese. These were brought
together by the representatives of the Bishops’ Conferences to the Synod.

Or second perhaps it was a synod of Bishops, who in order to take
the temperature of their dioceses, consulted the clergy, religious and laity,
and then got together to talk about it.

And the purpose of both of these was to let the Pope know
what was going on, so that he could either (i) be informed or (ii) issue a
statement. We have seen in the past how this helped Saint John Paul II know
what was going on in parts of the world that he didn’t have too much knowledge
of, like Asia for example.

If the synod thought it was doing the first of
these things (bringing the thoughts of the Church together in the public
forum), then there are some practical problems. The most obvious is the
question of whether Cardinal Nichols and Bishop Peter Doyle represented the
views of the Church in England and Wales. And how did they know our
views, and how do we know what they actually said.

This is the
place for wonderful paranoia – however I know that some voices are listened to
more than others. If someone is agreeing with you, you rate it much more highly
than a voice which is diametrically opposed. That is human nature. Where was I
at the synod? Where was my voice? Or yours? Or anyone’s?

It is, I’m afraid the problem of representative
democracy. The synod could not possibly be that, and I do not think that it
was.

So we are left with the second view – a meeting of
Bishops, who, in order to be informed, consulted their clergy, religious and
laity. They chose how it was going to be done, and collated the information and
used it in whatever manner they wished. It does not matter if they represent
anyone’s views. And they do not have to reference either their own people, nor,
importantly, their fellow Bishops, who were not chosen for this august honour.

In my opinion, the synod on the Family was
essentially a group of Bishops who had been chosen by the Pope to advise/inform
him. This was done either through direct Papal choice or by ‘allowing’ Bishops’
Conference to elect from among themselves who was to go to Rome.

Welcome to the website of the Friends of the Suffering Souls, a Catholic Lay Association conducting a perpetual novena of Masses for the Holy Souls in Purgatory.This association was inspired by the 100 consecutive Masses offered for the Holy Souls by the Venerable Archdeacon Cavanagh, Parish Priest of Knock prior to the appearance there of Our Blessed Mother in 1879.Each member undertakes to arrange at least one Mass each year for our deceased members and for all the Holy Souls.But you can arrange as many Masses as you wish for this novena.It is our goal to reach an average of 200 Masses for the holy souls each and every day of the year.

I have been a member for a number of years. You undertake to have a Mass said (in the new form or the Traditional form) at least once a year - they suggest on your birthday, as it is a date that you always remember.

Purgatorial societies were always a part of the life of the Church and are still essential. There were whole Churches dedicated to it. See here, for example.

Please pray for the souls in purgatory, and have masses said for them. It is the only help that we can now give them.

Sunday, 1 November 2015

The term has been used by some as a short hand for
‘the governance of the Church’, and this is, I think, incorrect. People have
started to think that synodality can be equated with the way the church should
be run. They are confusing synodal governance with synodality.

Synodal governance is exercising authority through
synodal means, and rather like democracy, could take many forms. It could be
that different constituents come together and vote and that if all of the ‘synods’
agree, then this becomes law. Or that a majority of them do. Synods here are
shorthand for ‘groups of people’.

We could put this forward in the following manner
that a synod should contain its own type of people – a synod of laity, of
religious, of clerics, of Bishops etc. And that they could the generate ideas,
correctives, advances, restraints, and that the whole would then function like
a well oiled machine.

Or we could have an idea of synodal governance
where each synod would comprise all of the elements mentioned above – a synod
would have Bishops, clergy, religious, laity and would similarly function to
propose certain elements of governance for the people of God.

Of course we would have to remove the bar from
governance strictly being limited to the ordained, but that could be done.

We might run into problems of one geographic synod
opposing another – what is forbidden in Poland is allowed in England and Wales
for example. Or a synod of Bishops opposing a synod of laity.

But of course both of these, I submit, are flawed
interpretations of synodality.

Synodality is not about governance. It is not
about who rules what and who decides what. In founding the Church, Christ was
clear that there were different gifts, different charisms given to different
people, and types of people within His Body, which is the Church.

And God has appointed in the church first
apostles, second prophets, third teachers, then workers of miracles, then
healers, helpers, administrators, speakers in various kinds of tongues. Are all
apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Do all work miracles? Do all
possess gifts of healing? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? (I Cor
12)

Governance is a gift of the spirit. It finds its
place within synodality. Synodality does not exist to exercise authority any more
than the National Health Service exists to have a chief executive, or the UK to
have a monarch.

When synodality is deformed simply to talk about
who makes decisions, then it is pointless, and rather at odds with our founder,
who, let us remember happens to be God.

So are we any closer to knowing what synodality
is? And what actually was the synod on the family doing?

Friday, 30 October 2015

I previously said that synodality as a concept was
a little fraught as no one really knows what it is. I stand by that. And also I
gave a brief, very brief, overview of what it could mean on a supra-ecclesial
level (of how particular churches or groups of churches inter-react). The model
which we can see working in the Anglican Communion, of Synodal/democratic
governance has led to its inevitable conclusion: to all intents and purposes
the destruction of unity, with just a fig leaf of respectability. This is
described as the genius of Anglicanism. It is a new thing.

Now, I do not want to bash other Christian communities,
so I will leave Anglicanism for a moment, though it can never be taken as a
model for Catholicism.

I also had a bit of a swipe at Bishop’s conferences.
This is for a specific purpose. If you wish to propose synodality as a vision
of the correct interplay of the different groups of the Church, then you have
to do it properly.

The image for synodality comes from Eucharistic or
Communion Ecclesiology. This uses the picture of the Bishop celebrating Holy Mass,
assisted by priests and deacons and the laity taking their place and role in the
Eucharistic assembly. Each has their place, and each are needed for the image
to be completed. This, I would say, is in accord with documents such as Lumen Gentium
§7.

But this is diocesan based, and has nothing to do with Bishops' conferences. If we are to take seriously the idea that my Bishop is a successor
of the Apostles, and that as such is a member of the Sacred College which is the
continuation of the Apostolic College, and further that he, with me and the deacons,
religious and laity make up the image and icon of the Church, then where
exactly does a Bishops' Conference fit in? They are not the Apostolic College
working together. They are bits of it, not the whole thing. And neither are they the full synodal image of the Church. In
fact, they are nothing in Eucharistic or Communion Ecclesiology.

It may be that we want to use Bishop’s Conferences
in this way or that, but they are not essential to the Church, either
practically or theologically. It may be that they are a way sneaking in
localism (heaven forfend!) with this bunch doing this, and that bunch doing
that, but if their competency does not have theological roots, and I would
strongly argue that they have no theological roots whatsoever, then they should
not be left in charge of anything more important than which comics to buy, and
whose turn it is to do the washing up.

I find it ironic then, that one of the things
which is threatened from this exercise in ‘synodality’ is the strengthening of
something which does not exist within it.

Tuesday, 27 October 2015

It has been bothering me for quite a while now,
that no one actually knows what synodality means. In this VERY interesting
interview with Cardinal Pell, here, he says:

Catholicos,
a Greek word, means universal, it doesn’t mean continental or regional.
Synodality – I’m not quite sure what it means when it’s applied to the whole of
Church life as distinct from the existence of a synod like this. But these
things are to be the activities that are to continue to flow along.

I find this worrying, because Cardinal Pell is an
informed intelligent man. Some of the others who graced the scene of the Synod,
I fear, are neither so well informed nor intelligent. So if Pell didn’t know
what synodality is, who exactly did?

This is important as this was what was supposedly
going on. Just because they met in a thing called a ‘synod’ does not mean that
they were participating in synodality. And just because they said ‘we’re acting
synodically’ similarly does not mean that they are. Me and a few mates can turn
up to a parliament and say that we’re acting democratically, but we could just
be having a game of Poker, a few beers and a packet of crisps. The meeting and
the words do not indicate what was actually going on.

So what is synodality. Well, as a callow youth, I
wrote a thesis on it. Although you can buy a copy, here, I do not really recommend
you do, it is extremely dull (get the one on confession instead, here). The only reasonable
definition of it I came across was from ARCIC The Gift of Authority, 1999

In each local church all the faithful are called
to walk together in Christ. The term synodality
(derived from syn-hodos meaning “common
way”) indicates the manner in which believers and churches are held together in
communion as they do this. It expresses their vocation as people on the Way
(cf. Acts 9.2) to live, work and journey together in Christ who is the Way (cf.
Jn 14.6)

So synodality is the way in which the people of
God journey along the Way to Him who is the Way. It is the interplay between
the different people/roles/elements in the church and between local churches.
You can easily see how this definition comes from the Protestant Anglican
worldview. And you can see how it can easily be dangerous to a Catholic
sensibility.

Here, the danger is in the local/universal church relationship.
For Anglicans there is neither need nor, in some cases desire, for close unity,
except in name. Thus you can have all being in an “Anglican Communion” looking
to Canterbury as a See that once held the whole thing together. But let’s be
honest, when you have the position of one bit of the Anglican Communion
rejecting the ministry of another bit, and that being accepted, you have to ask
in what meaningful sense there is unity. Is it simply a shared history?

I would say that this ‘supra-national’ use of
synodality cannot have any meaning if the local churches are equal in authority,
and here we see the age old danger of Kaspar’s priority of the local church,
wonderfully squashed by Ratzinger/Benedict, but rather like Japanese Knotweed,
with deep pernicious roots. It’s evil daughter is Bishop’s Conferences with
doctrinal power.

By the way, why should it be Bishop’s conferences?
In the image of synodality, which I’ll look at later, the overriding icon is
the Bishop celebrating Holy Mass, surrounded by Priests, Deacons, and the Laity.
Synodality explicitly takes its
image from the diocesan church. Nothing at all to do with Bishop’s Conferences.
Indeed I would go so far as to say that they are alien and poisonous to the very
idea of synodality.

But we cannot have a bunch of churches with no
authority structure, as this would make 'synodality' not work. Imagine a parliament without a speaker, image a family
where everyone has an equal voice, and the three children decide to spend the
mortgage money on sweets and comics. This is the reason why the Anglicans are
currently drifting further and further apart. Synodality on this level demands
that something holds it together.

If synodality is the correct interplay within visible
elements making up the Church, then the role of the Pope is essential.

So, is this what the Synod was doing? In a word,
no. And in a word, it was getting there.

Monday, 26 October 2015

In my role as 'random priest always willing to cover a Latin Mass at the drop of a biretta' I found myself in Ryhope in Sunderland to sing Mass last week. The Mass has been going there for twenty years and is a good and holy thing.

Monday, 12 October 2015

This afternoon, reading the Latin text of Nostra
Ætate, the Vatican II document on non-Christian religions, (it was a slow day
in Great Swinburne) I came across the following quotation from St Paul’s letter
to the Romans 9.4-5. The Revised Standard Version (the one I invariable use)
has it thus

They are
Israelites, and to them belong the sonship, the glory, the covenants, the
giving of the law, the worship, and the promises; to them belong the
patriarchs, and of their race, according to the flesh, is the Christ.

So far so good. I know this bit, and can go on
about it for AGES… blaa, blaa, blaa.

But, you see, (and you will remember if you have
kept up thus far) I was reading it in Latin. Now my Latin is enough to order a
newspaper and say how I want my eggs in the morning, and there is no way on
this planet that I would say I’m even proficient in the language, but
I, even I, can spot an erroneous plural when I see one. (Also remember that my
PhD thesis is on covenants so I have a head start).

So I checked the Vulgate (the official Bible in
Latin) and it said ‘testamenta’ – covenants, plural.

You can image that by this point I am in a tizz,
all a-shock and a-shiver. But then my old memory came cranking into play.

“Wait a minute” I said to myself “which version of
the Latin Bible are we dealing with here?” And therein is the solution… and the
problem.

The Council Fathers were using the Clementine
Vulgate (no, not the citrus based fruit… keep up!) used from 1592-1979. It says
‘testamentum’ – covenant. But the New Vulgate, 1979- , says ‘testamenta’ –
covenants. New Bible plural, Old Bible singular.

Ahh, I hear you sigh, problem solved.

But just you wait a minute! This is not solved at
all. The official Bible of the Church says something different to a text in an
Ecumenical Council of the Church. So which do we follow?

Should Vatican II be updated with the New Vulgate
(thus riding a coach and horses through any idea of trying to critically engage
with the ‘text’ of the conciliar documents – after all their very words can now
be changed by subsequent documents. Let me at them... there's a few changes I'd like to make)?

Or should we mistranslate Vatican II in line with
the New Vulgate (dodgy on so many levels)?

Or should we keep the primacy of an Ecumenical
Council over subsequent Papal acts (a hoot and a riot since most stuff that a
Catholic comes into contact with post Vatican II bears little relation to the
Church as the Council Fathers knew and experienced it)?

Friday, 9 October 2015

I'm sitting in my college, supposedly working, but actually looking at the view. This is ridiculously beautiful. It is very difficult at times to work...

You can see the website for the college here. When I came to Durham, I had to choose a college. They of course then decide whether or not you will be accepted. I had to give a reason for choosing University College (commonly called Castle). I claimed that it would be ideal for me as it would be close to the Theology Faculty.

Pages

About Me

Our Lady St Mary of Glastonbury

The Glastonbury Prayers

O Lord Jesus Christ, whose glorious Mother was honoured for so many centuries under the title of Our Lady St Mary of Glastonbury, grant that through her intercession, together with that of your blessed martyrs Richard Whiting, Roger James and John Thorne, who in Glastonbury laid down their lives for their Faith, that true unity of Faith may be restored among Christians in this country and that we your servants may ever rejoice in health of mind and body to render you fitting praise. Amen.

At this Shrine of Our Blessed Lady we ask you, Almighty Father, to fill our hearts with thanks for our redemption. And as the names of Jesus and Mary were linked together in Glastonbury's ancient Shrine, we confidently ask through the merits of your divine Son and the intercession of his Blessed Mother, that You will grant us all we need for soul and body. Amen.

E-Mail

achaplainabroad@hotmail.fr

Search This Blog

Disclaimer

All sentiments on this blog are my own. Please forgive any mistakes and accept that I may not agree with you, or indeed, you with me.